Poster Boy
Mapping Alefgard from inside a psychiatric ward
Just before lights-out I stand by the window looking at the full moon, dreaming of escape. The field behind Hope Drive is a graveyard with no tombstones, a thin layer of frost blanketing the dead earth. Somewhere an animal is moaning. In my mind I heave the heavy desk chair through the double-paned glass and run screaming into the night, drooling, defiant, feral. The fantasy has been dulled by repetition but it persists in moments of acute loneliness, when I recall there is a world outside lithium and padded slippers and lunch cards and Occupational Therapy. It is November 1990. I’ve just turned 10.
I’ve been reading The Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle again. I like Sherlock Holmes because he always finds the solution. There is an answer written in the chemistry of the world and all you have to do is think it into your hand. Elementary, he says: The answer is an element.
